The interaction of one or multiple media, materials, objects, devices, processes or combinations of these, with one another, with light, or both (“light-art interactions”), has been a focus of an enormous amount of work among those making images of art, design, and architecture thousands of years. Medium and process have been important in images throughout history. The present invention is part of the mainstream current of experimental art.
Throughout the 20th century, since the invention of Cubism c. 1910, the solid form of images has opened up to light and space. The images produced show a general opening up of solid form, new uses of light and space, including greater reliance on real light and real spatial depth (rather than illusions of these), and the use of spatial depth that is transparent or translucent. Examples of new art forms invented in this 20th century movement are: the collage, the construction, the Drawing in Space, welded sculpture, open sculpture, the assemblage, photography, holography, illuminated transparencies (like works of Light Box Art), Light Art, Light and Perceptual Art, Shaped Paintings, Installations, Computer Art, Video Art, and film. These images expanded what is today a deeply rooted, mainstream aesthetic continued by the present invention, hereinafter referred to as the aesthetic of light and space.
Yet, despite the 20th century explosion of exploration, experimentation and invention in images, despite the opening up of solid form in images, and despite the emergence and prevalence of the aesthetic of light and space and the “irresistible impulse to make things clear,” prior to the present invention, image making and conventional images remained limited, problematic, and burdened by undesirable issues, e.g., often forcing choices between undesirable options. The roots of these limitations, problems, and undesirable issues have been at the very heart of the foundation of images, restrictions in the free use of their most basic constituent elements, their formal elements. Despite considerable work, few and often no desirable, direct solutions existed until the present invention. Prior to the present invention, the formal elements in conventional images, were not workable, reworkable, and controllable as desired.
Despite the prevalence of the aesthetic of light and space, conventional image making media and processes, and the variety of these images that existed remained significantly and undesirably limited and problematic. Image makers did not have satisfactory aesthetic control or creative freedom in the use of light and space with other formal elements in their images, such as transparency, translucency, and other forms of real light and real spatial depth, e.g., with and without color, with significant workability or reworkability, or in ordinary workspaces. Developing these images often forced choices between the aesthetic desired and permanence, and the resultant images were often compromises. Though images have been made in see-through layers throughout history, there is no conventional medium that can form images with controllable, variable, transparent or translucent layers of spatial depth without compromising the permanence of the image formed. Prior to the present invention, a strong, transparent or translucent, 2D or 3D image could not be made with a full range of workability and control, e.g., no conventional medium can form stabile images with workable and controllable, transparent or translucent texture, embedding, or negative space. Moreover, the ability to alter images spontaneously, and the ability to see or know how changes to a developing image will take effect later were limited.
There are no conventional transparent or translucent forms made as canvasses or as image supports for 3D images. All conventional canvases are opaque. Very thin polymer films such as MYLAR®, acrylic in geometric forms (such as sheets, cubes and spheres), and glass forms have been used as image supports for painted and unpainted images. There are, however, no conventional, transparent or translucent image support canvasses or 3D forms made for bonding to a wide range of colorants and other image making materials (e.g., paints, pastels, inks, collage, and photographic emulsions). Conventional image supports have limited the use of optical effects, light effects, and subtractive processes in images. The ability to form an image using both additive and subtractive processes is limited by conventional image supports, e.g., Shaped Paintings are limited, as is reworking and removal of conventional applications like paints. There are also limitations in freeing many kinds of conventional images (such as paintings, drawings, and prints) from staged presentations and illusionism. The present invention overcomes these limitations and problems.
Prior to the present invention, the use of polymers in images was very limited and problematic. Image makers never used and controlled polymer for interactions with light. They had limited or little control or versatility in the use of real transparency, real translucency, light, color, space, layering, texture, form, permanence, or processes in using polymers to make images. They never explored the variety of effects different polymers can create in images, the workability, reworkability, and controllability of polymers, or the solutions polymers can provide to the longstanding limitations in image making and in images.